Roberto Clemente, my favorite baseball player died because of foreign aid, or should I say the lack of it?

After a devastating earthquake in Nicaragua, the US sent loads of emergency aid there. Future Hall of Famer Clemente knew the dictator, Anastasio Somoza, would likely steal it for himself. So Clemente made a fatal decision. He chartered a plane and loaded it with stuff he bought himself. But the pilot and the plane he flew had records of frequently violating federal regulations. The plane with Clemente and emergency supplies disappeared into the ocean shortly after takeoff from Puerto Rico.

Clemente and I don’t have much in common, but we do share some skepticism about our government that sends foreign aid and the governments that get it.

When I began my Alaska residency in 1967, I was a conventional liberal. I had considerable faith that government actually helps not only Americans but people in other countries. That’s why I supported the Vietnam War at the time.

But over the years I’ve become increasingly skeptical. According to the latest study I’ve seen, half of foreign aid is military. That’s not including the wars we fight allegedly to “help” countries like Grenada, Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ve sent money and supplies to help countries build roads. But some human rights advocates have pointed out the main use for some roads is to transport the countries’ militaries to go after poor people seeking living wages or opposing being driven from their lands to accommodate multi-national corporations. I have no way of knowing that, but I do know militaries do use such roads frequently for their own use.

Dr. Brian Sweeney, Jr. has criticized me for the length of my anecdotes. So I doubt he will like this one: After I took him up on his offer to listen to his telling me why Ronald Reagan was a great president, I waited patiently as he told me Reaganomics was successful. (Reagan’s own budget director, David Stockman, begged to differ in the book about why the Reagan Revolution failed.) When he’d finished, I asked him about Alexander Haig’s comment after four American church women were found raped and murdered by El Salvador troops at US taxpayers’ expense: “Maybe they went through a roadblock.” After some coaxing, the doctor admitted maybe it was “unlikely” that the soldiers shot them for going through the roadblock even as the soldiers were raping them. The doctor speculated that Mr. Haig may have had more foreign policy details on his mind that we may never know of. In other words, Dr. Sweeney put his faith in the judgment of the very big government he so adamantly opposes. Apparently, he despises tax-and-spend liberals, but trusts tax-and-spend conservatives, now matter how much they spend, as long as it's overseas.

We sent military aid to Latin American countries, allegedly to protect them from communism. But, except for Cuba and a couple of Asian countries, there are few if any countries run by communists. There may be one or two countries that have voted communists into power through fair and democratic elections. Does that really justify sending big bucks to protect countries from world-wide communism? We station troops in places like Germany and Japan. What they’re doing there in 2009 is beyond me. Are still protecting Germany from the Soviet Union and Japan from China?

Am I the only one to notice that at least some people angry at the prospect of taxpayers’ money being used for Americans who need health care insurance don’t mind the zillions we are sending to foreigners and foreign countries?

Should we approach government spending overseas with as much skepticism as we do with spending in our own country? We have certain restrictions and laws requiring standards of accountability for government spending in our own country, restrictions and standards missing in other countries. We can’t impose our standards on other countries, but we can withhold foreign aid to countries that can’t prove to us they’re spending the money on what we send them the money for. Whatever happened to the aphorism, “You can’t solve problems simply by throwing money at them.” Or does it apply only when “liberals” do the throwing?

I plead guilty to being somewhat of a fiscal conservative. I’m unwilling to trust my government to confiscate my paycheck and send it overseas without telling me in explicit detail what it’s spending the money for. I take the position it’s not my responsibility to prove the government is wasting my tax dollars. It’s the government’s responsibility to prove that it isn’t.

Naomi Klein in "The Shock Doctrine" and John Perkins in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" both provide considerable evidence that much of our foreign aid is deliberately designed to make Third World Countries more dependent on the US so multi-national corporations can make more money by keeping poor people poor.

I think Klein and Perkins have a point. We keep pouring money into countries that remain just as poor or even poorer than they were when we started the giveaways. To some, I guess, simply pointing that makes me a “leftist” or an “isolationist.”

Like Clemente I support foreign aid—when done through the private sector. As much as possible, I use the maximum amount of money I can to take full advantage of my itemized deductions. That way I minimize the amount of my money the government can waste. I do that because I can hold my private charities accountable in specific detail for how they spend the money I send them. I can’t do that with big government. Those in the private sector charity know if they won’t tell me where and how they’re spending the money I send them, they won’t get any more. Government can just raise my taxes in retaliation by “auditing” my tax return.

It amazes me how many “conservatives” are so permissive with the way the government wastes their tax dollars or flat out uses it for immoral purposes overseas. With conservatives like that, who needs liberals?